"Vendidit hic Latium populis, agrosque Quiritum
Eripuit: fixit leges pretio atque refixit."
Besides this poem he wrote another on the praises of Augustus, for which
Horace testifies his fitness while excusing himself from approaching the
same subject. [29] From this were taken two lines [30] appropriated by
Horace, and instanced as models of graceful flattery:
"Tene magis salvum populus velit, an populum tu,
Servet in ambiguum qui consulit et tibi et Urbi,
Iupiter."
After the pre-eminence of Virgil began to be recognised, Varius seems to have deserted epic poetry and turned his attention to tragedy, and that with so much success, that his great work, the Thyestes, was that on which his fame with posterity chiefly rested. This drama, considered by Quintilian [31.] equal to any of the Greek masterpieces, was performed at the games after the battle of Actium; but it was probably better adapted for declaiming than acting. Its high reputation makes its loss a serious one—not for its intrinsic value, but for its position in the history of literature as the first of those rhetorical dramas of which we possess examples in those of Seneca, and which, with certain modifications, have been cultivated in our own century with so much spirit by Byron, Shelley, and Swinburne. The main interest which Varius has for us arises from his having, in company with Plotius Tucca, edited the Aeneid after Virgil's death. The intimate friendship that existed between the two poets enabled Varius to give to the world many particulars as to Virgil's character and habits of life; this biographical sketch, which formed probably an introduction to the volume, is referred to by Quintilian [32] and others.
A poet of inferior note, but perhaps handed down to unenviable immortality in the line of Virgil—
"Argutos inter strepere Anser olores," [33]
was ANSER. He was a partisan of Antony, and from this fact, together with the possible allusion in the Eclogues, later grammarians discovered that he was, like Bavius and Maevius, unhappy bards only known from the contemptuous allusions of their betters, [34] an obtrectator Virgilii. As such he of course called down the vials of their wrath. But there is no real evidence for the charge. He seems to have been an unambitious poet, who indulged light and wanton themes. [35] AEMILIUS MACER, of Verona, who died 16 B.C., was certainly a friend of Virgil, and has been supposed to be the Mopsus of the Eclogues. He devoted his very moderate talents to minute and technical didactic poems. The Ornithogonias of Nicander was imitated or translated by him, as well as the Thaeriaka of the same writer. Ovid mentions having been frequently present at the poet's recitations, but as he does not praise them, [36] we may infer that Macer had no great name among his contemporaries, but owed his consideration and perhaps his literary impulse to his friendship for Virgil.
CHAPTER II.
VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.).
PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS, or more correctly, VERGILIUS [1] MARO, was born in the village or district [2] of Andes, near Mantua, sixteen years after the birth of Catullus, of whom he was a compatriot as well as an admirer. [3] As the citizenship was not conferred on Gallia Transpadana, of which Mantua was a chief town, until 49 B.C., when Virgil was nearly twenty-one years old, he had no claim by birth to the name of Roman. And yet so intense is the patriotism which animates his poems, that no other Roman writer, patrician or plebeian, surpasses or even equals it in depth of feeling. It is one proof out of many how completely the power of Rome satisfied the desire of the Italians for a great common head whom they might reverence as the heaven-appointed representative of their race. And it leads us to reflect on the narrow pride of the great city in not earlier extending her full franchise to all those gallant tribes who fought so well for her, and who at last extorted their demand with grievous loss to themselves as to her, by the harsh argument of the sword. To return to Virgil. We learn nothing from his own works as to his early life and parentage. Our chief authority is Donatus. His father, Maro, was in humble circumstances; according to some he followed the trade of a potter. But as he farmed his own little estate, he must have been far removed from indigence, and we know that he was able to give his illustrious son the best education the time afforded. Trained in the simple virtues of the country, Virgil, like Horace, never lost his admiration for the stern and almost Spartan ideal of life which he had there witnessed, and which the levity of the capital only placed in stronger relief. After attending school for some years at Cremona, he assumed at sixteen the manly gown, on the very day to which tradition assigns the death of the poet Lucretius. Some time later (53 B.C.), we find him at Rome studying rhetoric under Epidius, and soon afterwards philosophy under Siro the Epicurean. The recent publication of Lucretius's poem must have invested Siro's teaching with new attractiveness in the eyes of a young author, conscious of genius, but as yet self-distrustful, and willing to humble his mind before the "temple of speculative truth," The short piece, written at this date, and showing his state of feeling, deserves to be quoted:—